Recent content by TheRatmeister

Schedule oddities: They've really ramped up the late night outbound "Get on this other line then change at X to the one you want" trains. Newburyport, Kingston, and Needham all have this now. Kingston has the privilege of the last inbound train doing that but with the RL at Braintree (I have no...

I mean, to some extent this is true, but this is also a major case of "People aren't shopping for things that don't really exist." Make duplexes available and people will buy them.

I would consider this way too vague/broad to be broadly applicable, this is really something that needs to be handled case-by-case by people familiar with the area they're zoning. There are places like Dedham Corporate center, where a quarter mile radius would require the rezoning of areas on...

Yeah this is what the official MBTA style does, but I'm still finalizing the actual layout of the lines and so I just haven't gotten around to finishing up all the details. There's still some missing station names, missing terminus line blobs, missing outlines over the water and CR, etc. The...

Getting the UR to make a perfect U is so satisfying that I just need to share it. While I'm here, if there was a station under the Tobin Bridge at Tremont St, should it be called Charlestown, Bunker Hill, Navy Yard, or something else?

Ah that makes sense, I thought we were talking about effectively bolting a rail layer on top of the existing CAT.

Are you suggesting that the state should impose zoning plans on the towns? Because I will disagree with you there, I don't think that brings any significant benefit outside of maybe simplifying a couple court cases while serving to antagonize both people and local governments.

My concern is not necessarily that the grade over the CAT is too steep, it's that this area is to some degree infringed upon by all the ramps, and that makes weaving a tunnel through said ramps without exceeding a 3% grade impossible. You'd for sure need to go under the Callahan tunnel ramps...

The choke point I would be much more concerned about is the Sumner/Callahan interchange. I believe 93S->Callahan has some pretty crazy swings in elevation that you'd need to navigate while also avoiding the Government Center exit and the Sumner ramps.

If we want to contain urban sprawl, perhaps this area should be turned into a green belt. If that is not a significant regional policy, it should be up to the farmers who own the land. If they want to sell to developers who want to build new homes I don't see why government has any business...

The 2018 study proposed building the platforms within the bore. (And for good reason, when you're this deep it makes construction of the stations significantly easier.) You'd need a bore even bigger than the Seattle one to make that work, I'm not sure if that's possible/feasible.

Adding on to extra emphasize that "Denser housing" doesn't mean 5over1s, apartment buildings, etc. It could be some duplexes/triplexes in a neighborhood that's currently single-family dwellings. If you're worried about the "character" of quiet single-family house streets this is probably the...

Given that the PATH exists, probably.

To suggest an above board reason, it could be that there's a lot more different with the 4 track alt than just "2 bores, scale everything up." Stations could be at different locations, the tunnel depth could be different, or any number of other things could be changed either slightly or...

The "Total Project Costs" line matches up almost exactly with the 2018 study, so presumably by using that number and condensing contractors costs and tunneling risk down into that category. Even if we only want direct costs, no contingencies or escalation, we're still at $8 billion for the full...